Welcome to my blog, People of the Book, Book Dragons, Bibliophiles, Book Lovers, etc. I caught the latest variant of the COVID 19 virus this past week, so, while I had more time to read, I've been feeling so bad that I could hardly sit at my computer or manage to stay awake long enough to read. Since I've been vaccinated 5 times, I've not had more than bad flu symptoms, but the Paxlovid anti-virals the doctors gave me have side effects that make you feel like you've been licking a dumpster and eating worms, so you're nauseated, have diarrhea and, in my case, terrible gut pain and fatigue. However, I feel like I'm getting better a bit at a time as we go into Thanksgiving week. So let's get into those tidbits and reviews...naps don't take themselves.
An honest life well lived. May we all carry such a legacy.
Obituary Note: Doris Grumbach
Doris Grumbach https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAbanrkI6aljckp_Gg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jBCJ_xpoMLg-gVdw, who in novels, essays and literary criticism "explored the social and psychic hardships of women trapped in repressive families or disintegrating marriages, and who, as modern feminism came of age in the 1970s and '80s, portrayed lesbian characters and themes in a positive light that was then unusual in mainstream fiction," died November 4, the New York Times reported. She was 104.
Grumbach wrote seven novels, six memoirs, a biography of the writer Mary McCarthy, and book reviews and literary criticism for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Saturday Review and other publications. She was also the literary editor of the New Republic and a commentator on NPR and The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS.
A scholar of medieval and modern literature, she had been the wife of a neurophysiologist for 31 years, the mother of four daughters, an officer in the Navy women's branch during World War II, and a professor of literature and creative writing at several colleges and universities.
After she divorced in midlife, she and Sybil Pike, a bookseller, were partners for more than four decades.
From 1960 to 1971, Grumbach taught English at the College of St. Rose in Albany, N.Y. She also began her writing career with the novels The Spoil of the Flowers (1962) and The Short Throat, the Tender Mouth (1964), which attracted little notice, though her literary biography of McCarthy, The Company She Kept (1967), "drew wide attention. Much of it, however, was hostile," the Times noted. Later novels include Chamber Music (1979), The Ladies (1984) and The Magician's Girl (1987).
"Critics disagreed sharply about Ms. Grumbach's strengths and weaknesses as a writer," the Times wrote. "Some said her portraits of lesbian and gay characters and themes were unrealistic, even stereotypical. But others found them lifelike and praised her for unflinching portrayals of women who were engulfed by intolerant social conventions or caught in loveless marriages, and of families unsympathetic to female friendships that ripen into love."
A native New Yorker who had also spent much of her life in Albany and Washington, D.C., she moved in her 70s to Sargentville, a small coastal town in Maine, where she and Pike opened Wayward Books, a used and rare bookshop, and Grumbach "began a new burst of writing, producing her autobiographies and a collection of essays on growing old," the Times noted.
During the 1990s, Grumbach wrote Coming into the End Zone (1991), Extra Innings (1993), Fifty Days of Solitude (1994), Life in a Day (1996), The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany (1998) and The Pleasure of Their Company (2000).
"The most lamentable loss in the elderly spirit is the erosion of hope," she wrote in an op-ed for the Times in 1998. "Still, despite my dire description, we elderly persist with our canes, in our long-term care and miserable nursing homes and 'rehabilitation' centers, and in our seats confronting the idiocies of the tube. In the short run, so to speak, we are all characters in Waiting for Godot."
This sounds like yet another winner of a show from the pen of the brilliant Neil Gaiman.
TV: Dead Boy Detectives
David Iacono (The Flight Attendant, The Summer I Turned Pretty) will play a key recurring role opposite George Rexstrew, Jayden Revri and Kassius Nelson in Dead Boy Detectives https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAbanrkI6aljckonSw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jBCJ_xpoMLg-gVdw, HBO Max's upcoming series based on the DC Comics characters created by Neil Gaiman. Deadline reported that the eight-part series is "a fresh take on a ghost story that explores loss, grief, and death through the lens of Edwin Payne (Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Revri), two dead British teenagers, and their very alive friend, Crystal Palace (Nelson). So, it's a lot like a vintage detective series--only darker and on acid."
Iacono will play David the Demon. Additional series stars include Briana Cuoco as Jenny the Butcher, Ruth Connell as the Night Nurse, Yuyu Kitamura as Niko, and Jenn Lyon as Esther. Michael Beach, Joshua Colley and Lindsey Gort recur. Steve Yockey (The Flight Attendant) wrote the pilot episode and serves as showrunner, with Beth Schwartz as co-showrunner. Lee Toland Krieger directed the pilot.
I love a good pen and stationary store, and this sounds like something that will make my long-standing B&N membership even more valuable.
B&N Buys Paper Source
Barnes & Noble has bought Paper Source, the stationery and gift store retailer with 123 locations across 25 states.
Starting immediately, customers will be able to redeem B&N and Paper Source gift cards at either store; this applies to future gift cards as well as currently held gift cards. Many B&N locations will also start carrying a wider array of paper products, including some Paper Source exclusives, and next year the company plans to merge the Paper Source and B&N membership programs.
Ridley Scott and Tony Scott have been two of my top 5 favorite directors for over 30 years. I always know when I see the "Scott Free" logo before a movie that I'm in for some wonderful, gripping cinematic story telling. Though Tony Scott is gone (RIP) Ridley still continues to make great films, and while I'm not a Kristen Stewart fan, I plan on watching this movie when it debuts.
Movies: The Chronology of Water
Kristen Stewart "just completed her 2022 goal: marking her feature directorial debut," IndieWire reported, noting that the "long-gestating adaptation" of Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir The Chronology of Water https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAbcxeUI6aljcExzGA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jBDsStpoMLg-gVdw is co-written by Stewart and Andy Mingo. Imogen Poots will star. Stewart previously collaborated with Scott Free for her 2017 short film directorial debut Come Swim, which she also wrote.
"Lidia's memoir honors corporeal experience, radically," Stewart said. "To make that experience physical feels vital to me and what this impulse means... is that it absolutely must be a film.... This project has been cooking for five years with the help of Scott Free, whom I could not be more privileged to have as partners and friends. Imogen Poots will carry this movie and the staggering weight of Lidia's life. She can hold it. I am beyond lucky to have her."
Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions is producing the film alongside co-writer Mingo. Michael Pruss also produces, with Rebecca Feuer serving as an executive producer.
"Ridley and I are delighted to be working with Kristen again, this time on her feature directorial debut, adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch's extraordinary memoir," Pruss said. "Just as we have seen in Kristen's short films as a director, I have no doubt that she will bring that same level of style, uniqueness and fearless emotionality to The Chronology of Water. Furthermore, to have the opportunity to work with Imogen--who is tailor-made for the lead role--is incredibly exciting. The combination of their talents will no doubt produce something exquisite for film audiences worldwide."
And here's the reviews:
Blood and Moonlight by Erin Beaty is a romantic mystery paranormal thriller with fearless and decisive prose and a plot that is beautifully engaging. The characters are unique, yet very real, and I felt like I was in France or Italy during the Renaissance watching all the beautiful architecture and sculpture being created by artisans/artists whose names will never be forgotten via their legendary masterpieces. Add in some moonlight magic and you've got a Poe-esque murder mystery that's hard to put down. Here's the blurb: In Erin Beaty's fantasy mystery-thriller, Blood and Moonlight, an orphan with a secret, magical sight gets caught between a mysterious genius and the serial killer he’s hunting.
Rising
above the city of Collis is the holy Sanctum. And watching over its
spires is Catrin, an orphan girl with unique skills—for she alone can
spot the building’s flaws in construction before they turn deadly.
But when Catrin witnesses a murderer escaping the scene of his crime,
she’s pulled into a dangerous chain of events where the only certainty
is that the killer will strike again. Assigned to investigate is the
mysterious and brilliant Simon, whose insights into the mind of a
predator are frighteningly accurate.
As the grisly crimes
continue, Catrin finds herself caught between killer and detective while
hiding her own secret—a supernatural sight granted by the moon,
destined to make her an outcast, and the only thing that might save her
and those she loves from becoming the next victims.
I'm not sure why the heroine/hero of so many fantasy novels have to be orphans, but for some reason that is the trope that nearly every popular author uses at one time or another. I'm also not sure why it resonates with people who were obviously not raised as orphans to see a parentless child succeed, but it seems to come with built-in empathy that gets our protagonist into the thick of things faster. Anyway, I loved the fearless Cat and enjoyed her sense of loyalty and love of prowling around at night. I didn't like the male protagonist, Simon very much, because, as is also the usual trope in these novels, Simon's an arrogant, judgemental and cold/cruel asshat who treats Cat like crap, yet she keeps coming back for more, though I felt she didn't really need a love interest, as all the men in the novel were either too old or utter sexist jerks who deserved a kick in the crotch. Still, the murder mystery was well done, and I loved the cover art for this novel so much that I probably would have bought it just for that, as long as the contents were written in a genre I enjoy. I'd give this novel an A, and recommend it to anyone who would like a modern take on the Hunchback of Notre Dame or EA Poe mysteries or the darker side of steampunk.
Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn is the 4th book in her Lady Julia Grey Victorian mystery series. This one takes place in India, after Julia and Brisbane have married and are trying to get on equal footing in their detective agency, though, as with most men of the era, Brisbane wants Julia to stay away from dangerous investigations and park her intellect in favor of being kept at home as a silent and obedient wife. Unfortunately for him, (but fortunately for us) Lady J has ADHD and can't sit still, let alone not follow her snooty nose and get mixed up in whatever murder mystery has unfolded. She's always got personal motivations for her inept sleuthing, usually because it involves one of her 9 eccentric siblings. This time it's Lady J's sister and her sister's lesbian paramour, who has fled England pregnant and now a widow, as the man she married (only because she wanted children and refused to hear of anything but marriage to a man as a solution, even knowing how dangerous childbirth was at the time for women...and sure enough, she dies in childbed...oh come now, this isn't a spoiler for anyone with half a brain who can see it coming a mile away) was killed while taking over his family's tea plantation in India. Here's the blurb: Return to a world of Victorian mystery and magic in the fan-favorite Lady Julia Grey historical series from New York Times bestselling author of Killers of a Certain Age, Deanna Raybourn.
Lady
Julia Grey and her husband, detective Nicholas Brisbane, are ready to
put their investigative talents to work again. At the urging of Julia’s
eccentric family, they hurry to India to aid an old friend, the newly
widowed Jane Cavendish.
Living on a tea plantation with the
remnants of her husband’s family, Jane Cavendish is consumed with the
impending birth of her child—and with discovering the truth about her
husband’s death. Was he murdered for his estate? And if he was, could
Jane and her unborn child be next?
Amid the lush foothills of the
Himalayas, dark deeds are buried and malicious thoughts flourish. The
Brisbanes uncover secrets and scandal, illicit affairs and twisted
legacies. The danger is palpable and, if they are not careful, Julia and
Nicholas will not live to celebrate their first anniversary.
Interestingly enough (not really, this is a historical romance novel, after all) Julia and Brisbane only seem to get along after one or the other is near death, and only then, after they've recovered enough to have sex. Sex is their only real point of agreement or contentment in their marriage. Also, Lady J is a snob, whether she thinks so or not, who looks down on those of the actual working class, and has the whole "look how happy those savages harvesting the tea are, how colorful their slavery is, and yet how like animals they are" racist thing going on, which, in addition to the men's misogyny makes more than a few chapters of these novels hard to read or deal with for the 21st century reader. I cringed a lot in this edition, and wondered why Raybourn insisted on playing up these horrific Victorian attributes instead of just writing them out in favor of making the heroine strong and not a slave to male whims and desires. Still, as with all her novels, Raybourn is an excellent prose stylist and her plots do not flag. I'd give this book a B- and recommend it to anyone who has read other Lady Julia books.
Only Bad Options by Jennifer Estep is a science fiction romance/adventure novel that I was able to get cheaply, and to be honest, I was curious how the author of the Elemental Assassin series would fare in the science fiction genre. She did okay, but I felt that there were too many tropes and not enough of her originality on display here. Here's the blurb: New York Times bestselling
author Jennifer Estep blasts off with an exciting new science-fiction
fantasy adventure with a dash of historical romance. This action-packed
space opera features a mix of magic and technology, along with a soul
mates and enemies-to-lovers story. Perfect for fans of Star Wars, Bridgerton, and Pride and Prejudice.
A woman who sees everything...
Few
people know the name Vesper Quill. To most folks, I’m just a lowly lab
rat who designs brewmakers and other household appliances in the
research and development lab at the powerful Kent Corp. But when I point
out a design flaw and a safety hazard in the new line of Kent Corp
spaceships, everyone knows who I am—and wants to eliminate me.
I
might be a seer with a photographic memory, but I don’t see the trouble
headed my way until it’s too late. Suddenly, I’m surrounded by enemies
and fighting for my life.
I don’t think things can get any worse
until I meet Kyrion Caldaren, an arrogant Regal lord who insists that we
have a connection, one that could be the death of us both.
It becomes evident right away that Estep cribbed certain features and characteristics from famous sci-fi properties like Star Wars dark sith lords and Star Trek's Vulcan mind meld. Yet once again, the trope of the orphan (though Vesper's mother is still alive, but abandoned her as a child and still has no interest in Vesper as an adult) comes into play as lowly genius mechanic Vesper accidentally becomes bonded to a cold and ruthless imperial assassin and the two must work together to get the truth out about Vesper's bosses and keep themselves alive at the same time. While I enjoyed Vesper's inventive and scrappy mentality, I found the royal assassin to be a huge pain in the rump, and I was hoping that Vesper would find someone more worthy of her in the end. At any rate, Estep always tells a good story, and her prose and plots are clean and clear. I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi stories of female engineers who get the job done.
The Banned Book Shop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson was a YA contemporary romance that had me laughing and crying in equal measure. Though I did enjoy the diverse characters and small town struggling bookstore charm, I felt like Maggie's self loathing and deflated ego scuttled her ship more often than not, and when she's finally caught after lying to everyone, she acts like a five-year-old and tries to whine her way out of it, though she's a grown-ass woman! She of course eventually saves the whole town and finds her true calling at the same time (again, it's almost childish how her parents keep having to boost her ego by telling her she will find her calling one day and by her calling being "having parties and hanging out with fun people" when they could have just called her a party planner and part time bookseller, and let it go at that) while also falling in love with the towns rule-loving stuffed shirt who acts like a 75 year old man in a 25 year old's body. But of course, opposites attract, and that's so cute, right?! Insert eye roll here. Here's the blurb:
I, Maggie Banks, solemnly swear to uphold the rules of Cobblestone Books. If only, I, Maggie Banks, believed in following the rules.
When Maggie Banks arrives in Bell River to run her best friend's struggling bookstore, she expects to sell bestsellers to her small-town clientele. But running a bookstore in a town with a famously bookish history isn't easy. Bell River's literary society insists on keeping the bookstore stuck in the past, and Maggie is banned from selling anything written this century. So, when a series of mishaps suddenly tip the bookstore toward ruin, Maggie will have to get creative to keep the shop afloat.
And in Maggie's world, book rules are made to be broken.
To help save the store, Maggie starts an underground book club, running a series of events celebrating the books readers actually love. But keeping the club quiet, selling forbidden books, and dodging the literary society is nearly impossible. Especially when Maggie unearths a town secret that could upend everything.
Maggie will have to decide what's more important: the books that formed a small town's history, or the stories poised to change it all.
Again, I did enjoy the fact that this book was full of people of color and older people, but I felt that by infantilizing the protagonist, and then having her fall for a guy who seems more mature because he's a boring paint by numbers guy, it made for a weaker, less satisfying reading experience. Still, I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys opposites attract romances and small town bookstores that need saving from big corporations and local evil landlords.
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